ryan cooper @ryanlcooper.com · May 12 turns out that you can drive up the birthrate with a baby bonus, you just need to crank it up to twice the per capita income www.nytimes.com/2026/05/07/o...
1412 likes 37 replies
Replies
oh they even get a combo bonus
World’s lowest birth rate checking in (Hong Kong), with lots of really bad policies attempting to increase birth rates. We offer a two-time US$3500 benefit.
At least in the early 1990s we'd just got rid of the Berlin Wall and things looked vaguely positive. Any baby born now is going to be alive in 2100. That doesn't look good, from here.
Yes, but this whole "pay them" thing doesn't work when you're Amurikkka's KKKristofascists and their oligarchy, and your goal is getting back your slavery, not creating a middle class that's financially comfortable telling master "no".
i'm not really a kid guy, but i would consider having a kid or two for a deal like this
If you have a baby in the US you get a trump phone so he use it to call you fat and dumb. The phone is not free
I mean, if they're basically paying a full years' salary to have a baby? AND covering medical care and housing? That would put motherhood in reach of lots of women who otherwise would not choose to have kids.
"The bonus is on top of support for ongoing medical expenses and eventual college tuition." bsky.app/profile/ryan...
This makes sense because like. That is roughly how much a baby costs.
Hungary temporarily increased their birthrate from 1.2 to 1.5 over about 10 years, a 25% increase. It only required them to spend the equivalent of 6% of GDP on pro-natalist policies....
"The cost of raising a child well, in direct expenses and the opportunity cost of time, is tens of thousands of dollars per year. Policy encouragements that have been tried and mostly failed are simply nowhere near the relevant magnitudes." @interfluidity.com drafts.interfluidity.com/2024/02/06/d...
Upping birth rates is not about covering expenses. It’s about alleviating anxieties over everything in an uncertain world 1/2 bsky.app/profile/kimp...
Now this is where the rubber meets the road..
If we want adequate fresh water, fresh fish population, logging, and many other natural resources, then the overall population has to come down over time. And we absolutely, positively, can not have population continue to grow forever. The populate MUST cap, the only question is at what level.
We got a different thing going here. Did you know a human body has almost $300 worth of elements in it? And that’s before we drive up the cost of water. Here more at our next shareholders conference
Lol we don't need more people. We need to get those birthrates down way more.
I would also question how much they increased existing employees’ birth rates vs attracted new employees who wanted to have babies anyway.
the problem with this, as with all such programs, is that you have to pay everyone, not just the folks who were incentivized by the program at the margins
This is what I’ve been saying! Nobody ever cranks the numbers up remotely high enough and it’s obvious why not!
This tracks considering women’s lifetime income takes a huge hit when they have babies
This has always been my contention. Having a baby is hard (particularly on women) and expensive for everyone! Especially the first where you are operating with limited information (you know, but you don’t KNOW). You have to make the $ enough to make the trade offs worth it.
But remember: Companies *totally* can't afford to pay their workers or anything. And those high taxes on the rich? Just *pie in the sky* ideas that will never ever happen! ...until they do and everyone sees it was all bullshit from the rich asswipes from the start.
We don’t need more humans. Let’s focus on preserving the other species we are killing off.
Hmm. So yeah, if I had daycare covered for the 5 years I needed it, that would be...a little less than that, but yeah, an extra hundred grand might do it.
That's what a lot of European countries do in one way or another. My wife gets €300/month "child allowance" every month. The deductable sum on my taxes is probably a few thousand. Do that for the 20+ years your kids stay at home and that's probably 2 year incomes. (Belgium btw)
A one-off payment of $68,000 is actually really cheap. I’m surprised this was so effective. That is just $3,700 per year of raising the kid, a drop in the bucket. I previously speculated that $15K / year would be more reasonable. bsky.app/profile/prin...
heh I'd want to see the rate of increase over baseline for the company, not over the whole country
Gosh, it’s almost like if we support women and mothers, they want to have children What a novel idea
Child care is pretty cheap there too. I had an image of Korea being more like the US based on Parasite, Squid Games, etc. www.reddit.com/r/Living_in_...
Updating my CV
Would be about $150k in the US, yes? We would definitely have another kid for that.
Because by exiting the workforce to have and take care of kids you're not just giving up present earnings, you're also giving up what you would have made if you had never left the workforce and seen consistent salary increases.
This is absolutely WILD lol.
I mean, yeah. If you're going to set the rules of engagement at: "1. Unless you're very lucky, both spouses need to work 2. Unless you're very lucky, one/both of you is going to have to put your job in jeopardy to take care of that kid" The policy is going to have to be massive to make people jump
okay. let's do it. we provide SSI and pell grants and prek.